Before You Invest in PR, Understand These 5 Realities

When entrepreneurs come to me looking for PR, many have the same expectation: Get me featured in the media and my business will grow.

I understand where that expectation comes from. We see founders on magazine covers, companies announcing funding rounds and products appearing in major publications’ gift guides. From the outside, it can look like PR is a direct path from media coverage to revenue. Except that it is not.

After working in PR for close to 15 years, I have learned that the entrepreneurs who get the most from public relations are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who understand what PR can actually do, what it cannot do and what they need to contribute to make it work.

Here are five things I believe every entrepreneur should understand before investing in PR.

1. PR is more than press

One of the first things I tell my clients is that PR is not about collecting article links.

Yes, a credible media feature can strengthen your online presence and can give a prospective customer another reason to trust you. It can also help establish your expertise when someone searches for your name or company on Google.

But if your entire PR strategy is built around getting articles published, you are looking at only one part of the picture.

Consider where business actually happens. A conference can put a founder in the same room as potential partners. A trade show can create distribution opportunities for a consumer brand. An industry award can introduce a company to other stakeholders.

I once helped a client participate in a small business expo. That event led to a series of relationships for him, which eventually helped his business expand. That was a successful PR outcome.

2. PR builds trust before it builds sales

I learned this lesson from a client who had just launched a food product. We distributed a press release, and the following day I shared the campaign report with her. Her response was that she had not seen a spike in sales.

I remember being surprised by the expectation. But the experience reinforced something I now explain to clients at the beginning of a campaign — one press release is not a sales strategy.

A press release can tell people your product exists, an interview can explain why you created it, while a feature can give potential customers more context about your company. But whether someone buys from you depends on far more than whether they saw your name in an article.

Think about your own buying behavior. You may discover a company through an article, then visit its website. You may check its reviews, social media accounts and competitors before making a decision. PR can become part of that trust-building process.

3. No news means no PR

This is one of the biggest reasons PR campaigns lose momentum. I have seen campaigns slow down after three or four months because the company simply had nothing new to announce.

The original brief might say, “We have a new product launching in the fall.” That gives us a story. But what happens during the months before the launch?

We can introduce the founder, discuss the industry and pitch relevant interviews. But eventually, the same story becomes difficult to pitch repeatedly.

Your PR professional cannot manufacture news indefinitely. Tell us why you thought about it. How will it impact the economy? Did you conduct research? Did you reach a meaningful milestone? Did customers respond differently than you expected? Did you learn something that could help other businesses?

These developments give PR professionals something to work with. Your PR professional can find the angle. You have to give them something worth turning into one.

I once had a prospective client ask me how many journalists I knew in his industry. His reasoning was straightforward: the more journalists I knew, the better were my chances of getting the project.

I told him that relationships matter, but they are not enough. A journalist may know me, trust me and still reject my pitch. Why?

Because journalists have audiences to serve, editorial calendars to follow and editors to answer to. They are not obligated to publish a story simply because a PR professional ‘friend’ sends it to them.

That is why entrepreneurs should be less interested in how many ‘media friends’ their PR professional has and more interested in whether that person understands how to develop a story journalists can actually use.

5. Measure PR by opportunity, not by coverage

This is where the relationship between a PR professional and a client can become complicated.

Clients understandably want deliverables. They are paying for a service and want to know what they are getting. But a published article cannot always be the only measure of PR performance because the final editorial decision does not belong to the PR professional.

I once was pitching an op-ed for a client when a local magazine’s editor expressed interest. He wanted an exclusive. I worked on the piece with the client, edited it, made revisions and went through several rounds of back-and-forth with the editor.

After weeks of work, the editor eventually said the piece could be published only as sponsored content. The client declined.

That was the right decision for the client, but the opportunity had still required significant PR work. What mattered to me was that the client understood that. He did not look at the situation and say, “There is no article, so you did nothing.”

A PR professional researches opportunities, develops angles, pitches journalists, follows up, responds to editorial requests, revises material and negotiates opportunities.

Sometimes that work results in an article or an interview or simply a relationship that becomes useful months later. And sometimes, despite everyone’s efforts, the opportunity falls apart.

That is part of working with earned media.

When entrepreneurs come to me looking for PR, many have the same expectation: Get me featured in the media and my business will grow.

I understand where that expectation comes from. We see founders on magazine covers, companies announcing funding rounds and products appearing in major publications’ gift guides. From the outside, it can look like PR is a direct path from media coverage to revenue. Except that it is not.

After working in PR for close to 15 years, I have learned that the entrepreneurs who get the most from public relations are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who understand what PR can actually do, what it cannot do and what they need to contribute to make it work.